Vergne Fastest in Shortened FP2

Jean-Eric Vergne set the pace in Free Practice 2 for the inaugural Santiago E-Prix on Saturday morning in one of his Techeetah Renault Z.E 17s.

Vergne peaked with a lap time of 1:37.036 as most of the field set the first 200kW qualifying simulation runs of the weekend.

The Frenchman set his time just before the session was red-flagged in the closing stages after Nico Prost crashed his Renault e.dams car at Turn 9.

This accident curtailed the running and the session was not restarted.

Alex Lynn was the second-quickest driver for DS Virgin Racing after leading the times for most of the session until his lap time was eclipsed by Vergne’s late 200kW lap which was just 0.030 seconds quicker.

Panasonic Jaguar Racing driver Mitch Evans looked set to threaten Vergne’s time but had to back off on his lap due to Prost’s incident. The Kiwi therefore had to settle for the third-best time.

Mahindra Racing’s Nick Heidfeld and Felix Rosenqvist completed the top five positions while Sam Bird went sixth after topping Free Practice 1 earlier in the day.

There were fewer incidents in the second session although Nelson Piquet Jr. suffered a brief excursion and Jose Maria Lopez lightly tagged the wall at the first corner in his Dragon Racing-entered Penske EV-2.

Reigning champion Lucas di Grassi was down in tenth position just behind his Season Three title rival Sebastien Buemi.

The Brazilian will take a ten-place grid drop after a change of the inverter on his Audi e-tron FE04 cars.

The qualifying session for the Santiago E-Prix is scheduled to start at 12 p.m. local time.

Sam Smith is e-racing365's Formula E Editor. A 20-year veteran in motorsports media, including press officer roles in both the FIA Sportscar Championship and at Lola Group, Smith is a well-known face in the Formula E paddock, where he served as series editor for Motorsport.com from 2014-17. Contact Sam